Unusual Centerpieces

Create a stunning centerpiece using things you have lying around the house.

A simple collection of vegetables and fruit fashions a beautiful centerpiece. One of the "vases" is a squash: a circle is cut out around its stem, it's then filled with water to hold a 'Teddy Bear' sunflower and a few Hypericum berries. For another display, a jar is circled by a standing of asparagus spears. That "vase" holds crocosmia.

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You don't need fancy vases to have beautiful flower arrangements for a holiday meal. You can create your own using many things you have lying around--even ingredients for the meal. Here's a designer centerpiece that you can make in seconds.

Cluster a few jars--filled with star fruit and cranberries and a single flower--and surround with a sprinkling of leaves.

Russell Toscano, a master of floral design, has some great tips on how to use items you already have, like a mason jar, to make a wonderful floral treat. Variety is the spice of life, he says, so you should collect different jars from leftover condiments, canning jars, etc.

To decorate the jar itself, cut a star fruit into sections. Add one section to a jar.

Holding the star fruit against the inside of the glass with your fingers, fill the jar with cranberries.

Put some water in the jar, then add the flowers. In this project, yellow double tulips were used for one jar, orange tulips in the other.

Because the jars are so colorful, you can keep the bouquets simple by using only one kind of flower in each jar. Also used in the jars: billy buttons (Craspidia) and little yellow roses. Like the tulips, these flowers are arranged en mass for a striking effect.

To arrange the various jars, place them along the center of the dining table, staggered slightly for visual interest. Then, to connect the jars into one continuous centerpiece, fill in between the bouquets with a smattering of leaves.